So here is another Barkas, the East German equivalent to the West German Volkswagen bus. This one is an ex-ambulance I saw at the Berlin VW Bus festival 2014. The color is certainly not original, but the interior still was. The massive spot light on the ceiling in the back was actually still the light used if a medical operation had to happen in the back of the ambulance. This type of bus was built between 1961 and 1991, but with the plastic-y dashboard this one was probably one of the later, 1980ies models. A pretty amazing van.

I stumbled over this movie on the flight back from Australia in May: „Rush“ is about the rivalry between the Formula One drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the early and mid-seventies, culminating in Niki Lauda’s gruesome accident at the Nürburgring in 1976, and his come back after that. Most of my life I knew Niki Lauda only from his post-F1 times, as founder of an airline and pilot himself, and later as a F1 commentator. In that year of 1976, I proudly started primary school in August, and our bus Taiga Lily was born in May. The movie is actually pretty exciting, and the mini appearance of an early bay ambulance towards the end also made the kombi spotter happy. Looks like they got this detail quite right – the bus looks a lot like the real Red Cross kombi I saw last year in Berlin. The last of its kind, still in use at the Berlin Red Cross.